


Where Never Light Has Shone

by Evandar



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Post-Battle of Five Armies, implied future relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 18:18:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5466221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bard pays a diplomatic visit to Mirkwood, alone. Thranduil, as ever, proves to be something of a curiosity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Never Light Has Shone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Empy (Empyreus)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Empyreus/gifts).



> Merry Christmas! I hope you like your fic <3

He has spent years of his life on the edges of Mirkwood. He’d grown up with the tales of it – of the Men who entered the dark forest only to return mad and gibbering, or who vanished completely beneath its twisted bows. Bard himself, respecting the boundaries of the wood as much as he fears them, has never gone beyond the tree line. 

Until today.

A hush falls over his party as they enter. The wood is silent. Eerie. The hair on the back of Bard’s neck rises and his skin prickles as the weight of the air descends upon him. All those stories of madness and death rise up in his mind and it is all he can do to follow his guide deeper into the trees.

Elves, armed to the teeth and silent as their woodland home, race each other in the branches above his head. _Guards_. If his guide hadn’t pointed them out to him, he would never have noticed their presence. Even after witnessing the destructive power of the Firstborn during the battle and the birth of his tentative alliance with Thranduil, Bard is still unaccustomed to looking for them. For a large part of his life, even working on the edges of their kingdom, Elves have been closer to myth than reality. Truth be told, they could have been watching him in secret all this time and he would never have noticed; for all that he is sharp-eyed for a Man, he has learned that Elves have an uncanny ability to blend into their surroundings if they so wish.

He walks on.

The trees thicken and grow closer together. Their twisting boughs hang low, draped with tendrils of what looks like cobwebs. His guide says nothing – apparently such sights are to be expected – and as darkness falls beneath the trees, Bard’s last hope of _any_ conversation dies. Certainly, _he_ has no desire to be the one to first break the silence. Not when the entire forest appears to be waiting for him to do so.

There is a twitter from above. Bard could almost have believed it to have been from a bird, had he not already been convinced that there _are_ no birds in Mirkwood. His guide glances up, and as he does so, Bard glimpses his face: white and lovely as the moon, and equally as distant. The faint look of concern that twist’s the Elf’s brows looks almost indecent on him.

Above them, a bow string twangs. Something, not nearly so far away as he would have liked, crashes through branches and lands with a thud.

“This way,” the Elf murmurs to him, and they change track. They leave whatever path they had been following and twist their way off to the right. Twigs and thorns catch at Bard’s clothing. Had he been dressed for the diplomatic visit this journey is intended to be, the snagging would likely have bothered him. As it is, Dale and Esgaroth are in such states of disrepair that owning finery, let alone _wearing_ it, is nothing but impractical.

Bard is not an impractical man. He may still wake up each morning believing his role of King to be a dream, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t take it seriously. And while he suspects that he’ll always be a bargeman at heart, that doesn’t mean that he can’t do what’s best for his people. Spending money on clothes when it could be used for better things such as food and building supplies would make him no better than the Master had been.

The detour, such as it is, is mercifully short. 

The first hint Bard gets of their impending arrival at Thranduil’s palace is the trees. They begin to grow straighter and taller and further apart, and in their branches he begins to hear whispers of laughter and strange voices. The sky becomes visible between the branches, and Bard is surprised to see stars. It had been late morning when he entered the wood, and though he has walked in silence for what felt like days, he had only supposed to be hours. 

He has lost time, here amongst the trees. It seems that there may have been truth in the old wives’ tales of his youth after all.

That does not reassure him.

He is led across the river on a thin bridge carved of stone. Great doors, inscribed with trees and vines and the strange letters of the Elves, loom up before him, and swing open on silent hinges to reveal blackness beyond.

He hadn’t known what to expect from Thranduil’s palace, but this is completely different from anything he might have imagined. Never would he have expected the Elvenking to live in a cave. But what a cave! The path from the entrance twists downwards into the dark. In the absence of living trees, great pillars of stone have been hewn in their shape and from their branches hang silver lights that illuminate the way. Their light is cold and faint – like the stars, in fact – but fair and welcoming at the same time. Narrow bridges of stone arch their way from pillar to pillar; somewhere below them, water rushes. The cave echoes with the sound of it, and with the sound of Elvish laughter.

Bard cannot help but fall behind, and although his guide is as patient here as he was in the forest, he is too busy trying to look at everything to truly care. The palace is so strange and so beautiful that it is almost impossible to think of it as the cave it really is, or even as a building; it is rather an enclosed continuation of the forest outside – one so lifelike that he imagines he can hear the wind rushing through stone branches.

He walks as if in a trance, through passages and over deep chasms. He swiftly loses his sense of direction, and once he realises that he is totally lost, he tears his gaze away from the beauty surrounding him and quickens his step to catch up to his guide. The Elf glances at him and smiles.

“We will stop here,” he announces. 

Bard glances around again, but sees nothing special about this hall that marks it out as more important than any of the others they have passed through. But before he can ask, the Elf continues – and he raises a hand to pluck a twig from Bard’s hair as he does so.

“The throne room lies just around the next bend. You may wish to make yourself more presentable before greeting Thranduil-King.”

Bard feels his cheeks redden, and he combs his fingers through his hair to dislodge further twigs and leaves – no doubt deposited there by their detour. It is one thing not to dress in finery he does not own; another entirely to appear before a king while wearing more leaves than a tree. The Elf, out of either sympathy or politeness, averts his gaze as Bard dusts himself off and moves a few paces away to create the illusion of privacy. It doesn’t _quite_ work, and so Bard moves quickly. Once done, he clears his throat.

The Elf turns and appraises him. Bard tries not to cringe – tries to remember that he has battled a dragon and held counsel with kings. He knows that there’s not much he can do about the coat. Quite honestly, the leaves might have improved it… Whatever his guide sees, Bard doubts that it impresses him, but he nods anyway and turns once more to lead Bard deeper into the palace. Bard falls into step just behind him.

He is nervous now. He is eager to be rid of his guide and the awkward silence between them; eager to see Thranduil again. But his stomach is tight and his heart pounding at the same time – he considers Thranduil an ally, almost a friend, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Elvenking is almost as intimidating as the dragon had been.

Though far more beautiful.

He follows his guide around the bend in their path and up a flight of steps. The throne room, as it is, is the chamber to which all of the palace’s winding pathways lead. And at its centre, on a tall throne of wood and antler, reclines the Elvenking.

He is dressed in robes of silver grey, threaded through with palest green. His hair falls like a river of starlight over his shoulders, and a crown of spring flowers rests upon his brow. He is light and life incarnate – the most beautiful being Bard has ever seen – and he rises to his feet as Bard approaches.

The guide makes himself scarce. Bard barely notices; he has eyes only for the Elvenking.

…

His first evening in Mirkwood was a long one. The first surprise delivered by his host was that Elves are, apparently, semi-nocturnal and the festivities he was expected to attend would continue until near dawn. True enough, the sun is rising by the time Bard is shown to his quarters.

The possessions he brought with him are already there. His guide, Thranduil himself this time, enters with him and quietly shuts the door behind them.

“I trust you will be comfortable here,” he says.

Bard lies automatically. He sincerely doubts that he could ever be comfortable in so lavish a room. Even though his body aches for bed, he’s reluctant to so much as rest a finger on the huge four-poster that dominates the chamber lest he break it.

Thranduil, as always, seems to see right through him. He _chuckles_. A shiver runs down Bard’s spine. Unlike the light and airy laughter typical to his race, the sound of Thranduil’s amusement is dark and guttural and surprisingly like that of a mortal Man. Bard looks back at him. Fair beyond measure and alien as the moon, Thranduil should have seemed untouchable to him. But he has seen this Elf in moments of weakness – he has seen his fear and his anger during the battle and his raw sorrow after the abrupt departure of his only child – and he sees him now as something _real_. More real, in fact, than anything else in this kingdom of illusion.

Bard finds himself, quite against his will, grinning back. “I suspect you know me too well,” he says.

Thranduil shrugs. “The trappings of kingship are hard to adjust to,” he replies. “Particularly when they are unexpectedly thrust upon you.” He passes Bard on silent feet, the scent of orchids drifting in his wake, and crosses the room to the sideboard on the far wall.

Bard bites his lip. Of _course_ there is wine here.

But as Thranduil’s words begin the percolate through his brain, questions begin to build upon his tongue. It is hard for him, now, to see Thranduil as anything other than a king. He is, after all, the same Elvenking that is spoken of in all the stories told in Dale and Esgaroth. He is the only one that Bard’s people have ever known. But. There _must_ have been a king before him. Possibly a king before _him_. Elves, he has come to know, are not formed of magic and shadows like the stories say. They are beings of flesh and blood – beings that love and hate; that live in starlight and die as bloodily as any mortal Man.

Thranduil, at one point, must have been a child.

He tries to picture him as small as Tilda. It doesn’t work, and he shakes the failed image from his head even as he accepts the glass the Elvenking passes to him. Thranduil is eternal. Whatever childhood he may have had was long before Dale was ever dreamt of; before, perhaps, even Erebor was founded. And he will outlive them all, sheltered from the world and from death in the artificial forest of his palace.

It is, Bard thinks, almost tragic.

He musters a smile, however, and clinks his glass against Thranduil’s as they toast each other silently. The wine is warm and strong and far better to drink than to deliver.

He meets Thranduil’s gaze and sees himself reflected in eyes as dark and treacherous as the lake. He wonders what Thranduil sees when he looks at him – if Thranduil finds his mortality as terrible as Bard thinks his immortality must be – and if, to an Elf, he could ever stand out as something remarkable.

From the look on Thranduil’s face, he think he might.


End file.
